Graduates From Hard Dollar’s No-Cost Education Program in High Demand
Tempe, Ariz. – July 12, 2006 - Hard Dollar, a leading provider of integrated project lifecycle management solutions, has teamed up with 12 top national universities to address the construction industry’s growing demand for qualified employees. Hard Dollar, through its no-cost Education Program, designed to provide students with first-hand exposure to the world’s most advanced project management tools used in the field, is trying to combat the labor shortages by partnering with leading institutions to educate students to become critical thinkers and strong leaders.
The program is open to any university with a project management or construction management curriculum. Since the inception of its no-cost Education Program, Hard Dollar has issued approximately 300 licenses for its project management solution for use in the classroom setting free of charge.
Industry expert G. Bruce Gehrig, Ph.D., P.E. from UNC-Charlotte recently addressed the industry demand for construction program graduates during the international proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) held April 20-22, 2006. In his published paper, entitled “Meeting the Challenge of Industry Demand for Construction Program Graduates,” Dr. Gehrig stated, “An aggregation of each individual state’s long-range projections for the 2002-2012 projection period results in an estimated average of 11,000 construction manager job openings per year nationwide.” He also called out the industry shortfall for qualified talent, sighting “a current shortage of construction management graduates of approximately 3,400 – 4,400 graduates each year.”¹
“The students in our Construction Engineering Technology program learn from a real world perspective and are able to see the value of a well prepared work plan and the importance of critical thinking,” said Jeff Hannon, assistant professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. “The Hard Dollar solution forces students to learn strong, basic estimating and project management principles. That is why I use it in my classroom and why I know that Hard Dollar’s contribution to the industry will be significant.”
Hard Dollar is currently partnered with the following universities: Arizona State University, University of Cincinnati, Iowa State University, University of Florida, Montana State University, University of Maryland, Northern Arizona State University, University of Nebraska Lincoln, Southern Polytechnic State University, University of Southern California, University of Alabama, and the University of Southern Mississippi.
“Growth in the construction industry has been tremendous recently and in order for this to continue we need to produce new, well-qualified leaders,” said Alistair Johnson-Clague, president and CEO of Hard Dollar. “We must also keep in mind that these new graduates are set with the task of bridging the generational gap between the pen and paper managers of the past and the tech savvy employees of the future. These newly educated candidates have a tremendous job to do and we hope that with our no-cost Education Program we are preparing them to meet these expectations.”
To learn more about Hard Dollar’s no-cost Education Program visit: www.harddollar.com/partners.
¹ First Copyright is held by The Associated Schools of Construction (ASC). Original publication in the International Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Conference of the ASC (April 20-22, 2006). Reprint permission granted on July 6, 2006.
Tags: Construction, Education Program, Project Lifecycle Management Solution
